This week an article in The Atlantic entitled “Letter Grades Deserve an F” by Jessica Lahey struck a cord and has inspired this post. Ms. Lahey writes, “points-based gradingundermines learning and creativity, rewards cheating, damages students’ peer relationships and trust in their teachers, encourages students to avoid challenging work, and teaches students to value grades over knowledge.” As I read the article I wished I could recapture the hours of anguish I suffered in school for all the “B”s I received. You see, I hated “B”s, more than “C”s or “D”s. Getting a “C” or “D” meant that I hadn’t understood the material, which was fair and acceptable, but a “B”? On an essay it meant the writing was good, but not really great, and on a test it was a reminder that I was okay but not perfect. A “B” was like a bullet fired at my self-esteem.

This problem persisted until the beginning of my junior year at UCLA when I realized that because I was striving for an “A”, maybe that’s why I § Read the rest of this entry…

I recently came across an old Wall Street Journal I had not thrown away. The headline said, “Wandering Mind Heads Straight Toward Insight,” and the sub headline reads, “Researchers Map the Anatomy of the Brain’s Breakthrough Moments and Reveal the Payoff of Daydreaming.”

Here’s the question we each need to ask ourselves: Are we giving ourselves enough time to daydream?

One of my students wrote me recently that “getting a good idea is like catching a fly.” A good analogy. I’ve caught flies out of the air, and it requires both concentration AND the ability to relax and go with your intuition. Consider one of the examples in the article. Rene Descartes who, while lying in bed watching flies, realized that he could describe a fly’s position by coordinate geometry. The point is, getting a good idea requires putting the problem in front of you and then letting your mind wander.

The article says, “our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wandering and we’ve actually lost track of our thoughts…” One researcher suspects that, “the flypaper of an unfocused mind may trap new ideas and unexpected associations more effectively than methodical reasoning.”

Insight favors a prepared mind, which means that we still need to sit down and attempt to work out the solutions. But then, after we have looked at all the different options (writing them down helps tremendously) we should forget about the problem for a while and let our minds wander.

If we want our S.T.E.M. programs in our schools (or homes) to succeed, we need to encourage our students to approach problems insightfully – with discipline, but also the time to nurture the question, to let it swirl around in thought and to daydream about it a little. Then our students will catch lots of flies. (sorry, can’t let go of the fly analogy!)

Oh, one more thing, researchers have found that “People in a positive mood are more likely to experience an insight. How you are thinking beforehand is going to affect what you do with the problems you get.”

Last week a principal introduced me to a math teacher in my school district. The principal proudly stated that over the past three years this teacher’s students had averaged 98% advanced or proficiency in Algebra 1.

“Wow! How did you do that?” I exclaimed. “Is there something special in your teaching technique?” Obviously, this teacher knew her subject, but so do many teachers and without achieving these results.

“I care for my students,” she responded.

Okay. Yes, caring does have a lot to do with a teacher’s success. We wrote a blog about it in February called We MUST Engage Our Kids. Caring was one of four ways that we suggested. But 98% advanced? Can “caring” account for that kind of success? After I pressed for more information, this teacher finally revealed § Read the rest of this entry…

Math is hard. Of course it can be fun and gratifying, but at times it can also be discouraging. Can a teacher teach students how to properly respond to failure?

Finding the right answer is sometimes not as important as learning to approach a problem correctly, having the willingness to study a mathematic question from different angles and resisting the urge to give up. This is best taught in middle school. In grades 6 – 8 if a student fails a test or gets a “D” or “F” in class, it has no effect on his or her college admission records. But this failure can become a valuable life lesson and, in fact, if approached properly a teacher can help students prepare themselves for high school, for college and even find good jobs. Here is what is needed: § Read the rest of this entry…

Two months ago we posted an article entitled: We MUST Engage Our Kids. Here we listed what we considered the necessary ingredients for a teacher to conduct a successful math class. These were passion, real-world problems, humor, and caring. The other day I was chatting with Vijay, a math tutor working in Romania, and he sent me a short article he had written about how he had started tutoring. I found it fascinating. Two of the ingredients really stood out (though I’m sure he uses all four). Can you guess which two? Here is his article.

It all started about two and a half years ago when I was told to leave Oracle where I was working in Bucharest as an educational consultant. § Read the rest of this entry…

We discovered an article posted five years ago and thought it worthwhile to share. The article reveals ten easy arithmetic tricks.

We know many teachers do not like parents teaching their kids tricks, but once students have demonstrated conceptual understanding, learning tricks makes math so much more fun. § Read the rest of this entry…

Knowing the Order of Operations is important for a student’s success in math – so important that we included two lessons in the Elevated Math iPad app dealing exclusively with this subject.

If you are absolutely sure of the right answer, don’t bother watching the following videos. BUT if not… or if you want a peek at how Elevated Math teaches the Order of Operations, § Read the rest of this entry…

When running for school board, one question was asked a number of times, especially in the debates and usually asked by students, “How will we provide more teacher/student interaction?” I assumed that students wanted a more personal experience in their learning until an article last week made me realize that a lot more was behind this question. The BBC News wrote, “Secondary school pupils are so scared of looking stupid in maths lessons they will not tell their teachers if they do not understand, suggests research.” The article continued, “The reasons pupils gave for not asking for help more often were that they were worried about looking foolish, were embarrassed or did not want to draw attention to themselves.” In other words, they lack confidence, which could be overcome if teachers had the time to spend more one-on-one with their students.

Math students who begin their journey into absolute value usually evaluate expressions with absolute value as “always positive.” That is until they encounter the absolute value of zero, and then their answers become “always positive or zero.”

The formal definition of absolute value is |x| = x if x ≥ 0 or –x if x < 0. The negative x confuses students, and they never quite understand that it is the absolute value that is always positive or zero. Unless this misunderstanding is corrected, the situation becomes more problematic when solving inequalities that involve absolute value, which can lead to unhappy teachers and muddled students who usually conclude, “we don’t like math.”

In our Elevated Math lessons we make it clear that absolute value is distance, and distance is always positive or zero. We begin in lesson M3.1 with instruction on negative numbers followed by problems, and then we introduce the concept of opposite numbers before explaining absolute value:

A short article written in a 2006 issue of NCTM’s mathematics journal, Teaching in the Middle School, caught my eye. It was entitled “Some Students Do Not Like Mathematics”. The reasons stated were the same as we have heard for years: “We don’t engage our students,” “Parents are not involved,” “Students don’t know how to expand their thinking when they solve a problem.”

I object to hearing a problem discussed without including at least one concrete solution, and this got me thinking: What solution(s) would I offer if I had written this article.

Of course, my first advice would be to buy an iPad and download the Elevated Math lessons. Most students enjoy math when they watch the videos and work the problems.